Google skips Earth Hour but stays focused on environment

Remember seeing a black Google search screen last year (not Blackle) during Earth Hour? That isn't going to happen again this year.

While "don't be evil" Google vigorously supports Earth Hour, it acknowledged that the black screen doesn't really save any power and it confused its customers last year.

Last year's homepage during Earth Hour.

Power savings is very important to Google, and not just from a do-gooder point of view. Besides human resources (brains!), Google's biggest expense is probably the vast amounts of power that go into its huge data centers.

Google showcased its recent developments in power savings recently in Earth Hour blog post by Bill Weihl, Google's Green Energy Czar.

...After all, Earth Hour is about more than dimming lights; it’s about making a commitment to reduce energy consumption throughout the year. At Google, we take this commitment seriously and over the past twelve months we’ve worked hard to reduce Google’s own power use and to help others reduce theirs:

* We remodeled our San Francisco office to achieve a Gold rating by the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Green Building Rating System
* Our engineers are working on a tool called Google PowerMeter that will show consumers home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer
* We’ve designed the most efficient data centers possible and are sharing some of our best practices with industry peers
* In the fall we compiled tips and tricks to help our users save energy (and money)
* Our summit on plug-in vehicles in Washington was standing room only, with policy, technology, and energy experts all discussing an electric vehicle future

As a reminder, remember Earth Hour is later today (SATURDAY 28 MARCH) at 8:30PM. Take an hour off to enjoy the world.